Heritage Offers 3 Scenarios To Save Defense: One Is A Miracle

Heritage Offers 3 Scenarios To Save Defense: One Is A Miracle
Heritage Offers 3 Scenarios To Save Defense: One Is A Miracle

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently broke with a decades-long tradition in the Congress. And almost no one noticed. Congress traditionally has been sensitive to its Constitutional obligation to provide for the common defense. Despite disagreements and rancor on numerous issues, Congress usually cranks out defense appropriations and authorization bills each year. “Those days are…

Hey, Congress: Time To Get Real About National Security

Hey, Congress: Time To Get Real About National Security
Hey, Congress: Time To Get Real About National Security

When members of Congress return from their August recess, their plates will be very full. Our legislators need to fund the government for the next fiscal year, which starts October first. Although it may seem like a simple task to keep the government operating, a potential partisan collision over raising the debt ceiling once again…

Big Topics For Quiet August: Give Us Your Ideas!

Big Topics For Quiet August: Give Us Your Ideas!
Big Topics For Quiet August: Give Us Your Ideas!

Dear Reader, with Congress close to irrelevant (and out of town anyway), the Defense Department bracing for the coming end of the world (slight exaggeration) and so many of DC’s denizens out of town and recharging for the September onslaught, this August probably will be particularly quiet. So we are experimenting with that terribly au…

Syria, Sequester, & Mists Of Unreality At Senate Appropriations Mark-Up

Syria, Sequester, & Mists Of Unreality At Senate Appropriations Mark-Up
Syria, Sequester, & Mists Of Unreality At Senate Appropriations Mark-Up

CAPITOL HILL: Syria and sequestration dominated today’s Senate Appropriations Committee’s mark-up of the $594 billion defense spending bill for fiscal year 2014, but there was little actual progress on either. Appropriators are historically the most hard-nosed legislators; they’re the committees that have to match congressional rhetoric with actual money. But today, the appropriators approved a…

Hagel Outlines Bold, Painful Cuts to Army, Carriers, Pay, Benefits To Cope With Sequester

Hagel Outlines Bold, Painful Cuts to Army, Carriers, Pay, Benefits To Cope With Sequester
Hagel Outlines Bold, Painful Cuts to Army, Carriers, Pay, Benefits To Cope With Sequester

PENTAGON: In a grim presentation before the press corps, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel outlined deep cuts to the Army, Air Force and Navy he may have to make to cope with the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. Reaction was swift on Capitol HIll and the think tanks that inform so much of what senior…

Sen. Mikulski Blames House For ‘New Normal’ Sequester Deadlock

Sen. Mikulski Blames House For ‘New Normal’ Sequester Deadlock
Sen. Mikulski Blames House For ‘New Normal’ Sequester Deadlock

One of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate blamed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives for Washington’s inability to fix the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. “They assume sequester is the new normal,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, chair of the almost all-powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, sitting in on a meeting of SAC’s defense subcommittee…

Fewer Ships At Sea, Fewer Missions, Less Training: CNO’s Sequestration Damage List

Fewer Ships At Sea, Fewer Missions, Less Training: CNO’s Sequestration Damage List
Fewer Ships At Sea, Fewer Missions, Less Training: CNO’s Sequestration Damage List

PENTAGON: The Navy has 10 fewer ships worldwide compared to just a few months ago. It has no warships at all off South America to help combat the drug trade. And training cutbacks will force many units to specialize in a sub-set of their assigned missions instead of getting ready for the full range of…

The Gump Guide to Sequestration: ‘Dumbest Fiscal Management Policy Ever’

The House of Representatives will vote on the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act later this week. Sequestration will be the giant hiding behind the door as the House Armed Services Committee has marked its bill to the Obama budget request, which means that the effects of sequestration are ignored by the bill (as they are…

Congress, SecDef MUST Lead Pentagon From The Vale Of Seven Sins: CNAS

Congress, SecDef MUST Lead Pentagon From The Vale Of Seven Sins: CNAS
Congress, SecDef MUST Lead Pentagon From The Vale Of Seven Sins: CNAS

  WASHINGTON: Some of Chuck Hagel’s best friends in the defense world offered him a compelling report on how to save almost as much as the $500 billion that the Budget Control Act will force him and his successors to cut over the next decade. The wonderful title of the report, “The Seven Deadly Sins…

F-35: Sequester May Cost Air Force 5 More F-35As; Air Guard, Modernization At Risk

F-35: Sequester May Cost Air Force 5 More F-35As; Air Guard, Modernization At Risk
F-35: Sequester May Cost Air Force 5 More F-35As; Air Guard, Modernization At Risk

ARLINGTON:  “I don’t have the exact number yet,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Edward Bolton said Tuesday, but to pay the bill for sequestration, the service might have to cut its fiscal 2013 procurements by “two, three, four, maybe even five F-35s.” “That money’s just gone,” sighed Bolton, the service’s outgoing deputy assistant secretary for budget,…

High Noon: Left Versus Right On Military Spending; Heritage Foundation Speaks

High Noon: Left Versus Right On Military Spending; Heritage Foundation Speaks
High Noon: Left Versus Right On Military Spending; Heritage Foundation Speaks

By James Jay Carafano   Left, right. When it comes to the military, those labels aren’t supposed to mean much. But they do because, simply, those who believe in their parties define themselves in opposition to each other. While it rarely provides Americans with the rich debate and soaring rhetoric one sees in a parliamentary…

High Noon: Right Versus Left On Military Spending; Truman Project Speaks

High Noon: Right Versus Left On Military Spending; Truman Project Speaks
High Noon: Right Versus Left On Military Spending; Truman Project Speaks

  BY Rachel Kleinfeld Left, right. When it comes to the military, those labels aren’t supposed to mean much. But they do because, simply, those who believe in their parties define themselves in opposition to each other. While it rarely provides Americans with the rich debate and soaring rhetoric one sees in a parliamentary system,…

SecAF Donley: Strategy, Sequestration Out Of Synch; National Decision Needed

WASHINGTON: Here’s something to raise your hackles, or to Spider Man fans, set your spidey sense tingling. Air Force Secretary Mike Donley told reporters this morning that the budget and strategy talks are “two separate discussions trucking along in parallel.” “The tension between the need to do something to address the deficit and the strategic…

After Weeks of Rumors, Air Force Announces 1,000 RIFs

CAPITOL HILL: Readers won’t often read about Reductions In Force in Breaking Defense because they usually aren’t strategically significant, but the latest Air Force announcement that 1,000 civilians face lower pay, new jobs or may lose their jobs is indicative of the service’s dire budget straits — before sequestration. Congress, which has been hearing rumors…